25 April, 2011

What's the first thing that you should do with a new wi-fi router? Password-protect your wireless connection router. You don't want to experience what this guy did.

sunherald

Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of "pedophile!" and "pornographer!" stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo, NY homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents.

That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought. ~ Yahoo News

This isn't the first time an incident like this happened. And the unnamed homeowner won't be the last to experience this scary and humiliating incident.

A study released in February conducted for the Wi-Fi Alliance, the group that promotes wireless technology standards, provides a sense of how often computer users rely on the generosity, or most of the time technological shortcomings, of their neighbors to gain Internet access. An estimated 201 million households worldwide use Wi-Fi networks, according to the alliance.

Go ahead, put a password on your router now. It only takes a few minutes to protect your wi-fi network from unauthorized access.